Silence
by R Amythest
Summary: Regarding her uncle and what he did, her talkative father was silent. Quiet Hassar wouldn't lie with his silence. That was the real reason Madelyn chose him.


Notes: With great appreciation to Writer Awakened, to whom I owe the basic premise. T for mild language, implied-implied sex, and a horrible euphemism. Please be warned that this may be triggering.

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><p>She was his blooming rose, his honey bun, his ivory button and his little cat. She had been since she was a child and he left his own manse to live in Castle Caelin, and she was so charming, she was told, that she had snared his heart for herself. Everyone who visited the castle in these years would remember the sweet uncle who adored his niece and spoke of how lucky Madelyn was to have him around to spoil her with gifts and attention.<p>

That might have been one reason that everyone said she was being unreasonable when, in her teenage years, she snapped at him in banquets and dashed his gifts to pieces. Their disapproval was always hurtful, but above all she thought that her own father shouldn't have been among them, since, one day when he was done with his paperwork much earlier than usual, he found out for himself what was going on – and wordlessly excused himself in his intrusion as he closed the door again.

She never confronted Hausen. He had said enough.

-x-

When Hassar came to Caelin to negotiate trade treaties or help train the squires or something else Madelyn no longer cared about, he watched silently from the head of the table as she ignored Lundgren's requests for the dish of butter and her dark looks when her father asked, "Madelyn, would you pass your uncle the butter?" and forced her to comply.

Afterward in private, instead of the thousands of other questions he could have asked about her and her uncle, he asked in his broken common, "What uncle do for your hate?"

For the faint sympathy in his question and her vague certainty that he would not understand her words anyway, she told him exactly what he did because she needed to say it to a human face at least once.

So she was surprised when he said, "I see. In Sacae, those men" – he searched for the word – "exile. We exile them." At her teary smile he said with emotion clear in his voice, "In Lycia, this fine?"

"Apparently," she murmured, which was probably a word he didn't know. His eyebrows furrowed anyway.

Which was roughly why she fell in love with him.

-x-

She was certain that Hassar would be gone at the end of the month. That would be all the time she had to tell him everything and give herself to him of her own will.

She thought to herself at night that she was shaping up to be the whore of her father's court. She decided it was better to be a whore than her uncle's little cat.

Hassar probably thought it was some bizarre Lycian welcoming ritual, she reasoned, like they way they pass their daughters to their guests in the furthest reaches of Ilia. It was probable, when she thought about it, that he was just being polite.

Usually she didn't think about it. She felt, and when she did that she dreamed that Hassar truly cared and would sweep her away to Sacae. Sacae was open, free, sun-kissed. Most of all, it was not Castle Caelin.

With how often Hassar checked on her, invited her to watch him train the knights-to-be, and asked what her favorites were for everything he knew the name of, she dared to think that he felt more than pity and courtesy.

-x-

There was, for example, the time he invited her to watch himself and the General cross swords. She protested only a little, saying that she knew nothing of swordplay and wouldn't be able to discern anything but the eventual victor. That was enough for Hassar, the victor. He smiled slightly, silent as if modest, but he cocked his head and angled his chest in unmistakable boast. She laughed with delight, called him her champion. Maybe the General saw them then and suspected they were in love.

-x-

The real reason she fell in love with him was because one untimely moment at night, he sought her out and said, "I am going to home."

"Oh," she said. He looked at her, silently, with what might have been patience. She held her arms rigidly to her side, thought a little about the end of her month's respite, and swallowed. "You must be happy. To see Sacae again."

"Yes," he said.

An awkward pause; she didn't have the heart to say what words should be said and he was silent. "I hope our treaty helps your people."

"I did not sign promise."

"You... didn't?" She looked at him, standing there with a few more satchels than usual tied around his waist and his quiver upon his back, still patient. "I thought you ... I thought you came for that."

"We do not deal with men of dishonor."

She brought one hand to her mouth, a strange mix of surprise, gratefulness, adoration sweeping through her. "You... you didn't have to." Still patient. "You shouldn't leave empty-handed just because of me."

He quirked one eyebrow a little, keeping her in that uncomfortable silence. She noticed the cover of night, the canteen at his hip, the question in his eyes.

"Let me come with you," she said in answer.

-x-

Her uncle wasn't really the reason she left, she told him in a voice nearly drowned out by the rain. It was her father.

"What did father do for your hate?" asked Hassar.

"He did nothing." She wondered if it would have been ambiguous in the tongue of the Lorca.

-x-

Everyone knows the end of the tale. General Wallace returns from the Sacaen border and tells them he let the lovers cross, enraged Hausen would sentence him to the dungeons for half a year while wringing his hands and walking his bedroom rug threadbare.

They tell this tale as a parable of overpowering love. Madelyn's disobedient moments of youth, early signs of her romantic nature. The father's shame, heartbreak. Lundgren has no role in this story.

Quite quickly – if they had ever noticed at all – in Caelin, they forget about Madelyn, her uncle's little cat.

She remembers. It would take sixteen years on the plains, acceptance amongst another people, the love of Hassar and the innocence of her daughter and the love of Hassar for his daughter before Madelyn would one day buy a square of parchment in Bulgar and pen a rather impersonal letter to Castle Caelin.


End file.
